


A Journey in Pieces

by katamanda



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, steve/bucky if you squint - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1757687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katamanda/pseuds/katamanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soldier finds his own way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Journey in Pieces

It had been months.

Months since the helicarriers, since the Pontomac, since the fall of Hydra.

_But not fell, not really, cut off one head and two more shall--_

The Winter Soldier was a man trained to disappear, to be a shadow and a ghost. When he did not want to be found he would not be. 

He had not wanted to be found.

But he had been searched for. The Captain and the man with the wings, they had hunted for him, all around DC, then further afield. He knew where they went because often he followed them, a wraith in the background, a silent stalker wrapped up in his own broken thought processes. That was until their hunt took them out of the country, following the paper trail the Widow had given them. They thought he might have gone there returning on implanted Hydra command.

He hadn't listened to Hydra since the battle over the Pontomac.

If he'd put his mind to it the Winter Soldier could have followed even then but instead he stayed and without Steve Rogers in the immediate vicinity his mind began to... wander. Searching for answers in observance of the Captain’s action had brought him nothing.

In the beginning, defying orders, defying retrieval, he had visited the Smithsonian daily. It had been a poster that inspired it, the Captain's visage plastered on a wall, a bus stop; heard in a radio advert in a grocery store. The exhibit was free, it cost him nothing but time to go and visit. He'd attended so much the staff began to grow concerned, began to whisper about him as if he wouldn't notice but they didn't kick him out, how could they? He really wasn't doing anything wrong.

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, the man whose face he wore. The man who died falling from a train in occupied Europe in 1944, a hero. Born in Brooklyn, New York, oldest of four. Childhood friend of Steve Rogers, later Captain America. Volunteered for service --

_No, no, it was the draft. He was drafted, he only told Steve he volunteered. Didn't want him to know the truth that Bucky was being dragged into this war against his will. The dumb kid was so bound and determined to volunteer._

\--captured by Hydra, rescued by Captain America, became his second in command of the Howling Commando's. 

Then he died. 

This was what the Winter Soldier knew about the man who was Bucky Barnes. The problem was that even though he was being forced to conclude that he very likely _was_ Bucky Barnes he still did not for the most part remember being him. There were flashes, echoes; he knew when things he read about himself or Steve Rogers were wrong and that was all. Purposefully reaching for that information never worked, he'd come to accept this. Maybe all he could do was wait.

It wasn’t in him to do nothing, he had to have some mission, so one week after Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers left DC the Soldier boarded a bus for New York. The money he'd stolen easily afforded him the ticket. A train would have been faster but the thought of it sent a bone deep chill through him. No, no trains.

Steve would understand.

He went to Brooklyn, ignored the whole ride by the driver and other passengers beyond the bare minimum of confirming that his ticket allowed him to ride. He was aware that for all intensive purposes he was now one of the homeless, looked down on and scorned; unwashed and wearing ill-fitting clothes. None of that mattered to him as he wandered streets that were familiar and strange all at the same time, several decades of demolishing and rebuilding had changed the place beyond immediate recognition. The apartment block Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes once occupied was gone in favour of a department store, rebuilt before the idea of preserving the living places of the famous took off.

There was only a plaque bolted to the wall to tell the truth now. The Asset observed and moved on, finding his way around without needing a map. At one point he went and looked at Stark Tower from a distance, now mostly referred to as 'Avengers Tower' by the populace. The Soldier didn't comprehend why when all the 'Avengers' hadn't worked together since the battle of New York.

Steve wasn’t there though so it was only a look though before he retreated back to Brooklyn, back to what was semi-familiar and decided, finally, to wait for Steve to find him. No more running, no more stalking. Steve would come back to New York, to Brooklyn, he was sure of it. He only needed to wait.

The Soldier slept in doorways, in abandoned houses and stores. Every other week he would think to break into somewhere with a working shower and give himself a cursory cleaning. Routines were difficult to establish, it had been decades since his care was his own responsibility. Even eating had been difficult in the beginning; so much so he had lost much of the bulk HYDRA’s treatment had given him. Sometimes he woke screaming in his current bolt hole from nightmares that slipped away after seconds of waking into muddled sensations of terror and pain, ghosts in the machine the Soldier was meant to be.

The machine was breaking though, he realised, breaking as he realised concepts such as _like_ and _dislike_. That he liked the sun on his face and the breeze ruffling his hair, that he hated the rain. Hotdogs bought with stolen bills were explosions of liking, smothered in mustard and enhanced by the crunch of onion between his teeth. Mostly he drank water but sometimes there was Coca Cola, the sweetness almost too much to handle as he wondered when it stopped coming in glass bottles. 

_They shared sometimes. Passed the bubbly drink between them, fingers brushing together on every exchange._

Time was counted and marked with growing satisfaction, held onto as best he was able even though minutes and days would still slip by. He noted that when Steve Rogers found him the leaves were gold and red.

Autumn, fall. He fell once; it made some kind of sense in his head that when Steve, Steve golden small, skinny, big burly Steve found him it was now. Steve who approached him without fear and hope lighting up eyes that outdid the blue skies above, smiling with such gentleness, and such painful longing, as he held out his hand and patiently waited for the Soldier to take it. “Found you, Buck.”

Said like it was the end of some childhood game of hide and seek, a game Steve always won, squeezing himself into the smallest hiding places. Bucky didn’t begrudge him that. He – _Bucky_ \- never begrudged Steve Rogers anything. He wondered if he’d just now granted himself permission to think of himself as Bucky or had it been a slow crawling thing before, slipping through the cracks until the Captain’s voice gave him the ability to remember it.

His tongue wet cracked lips as he watched his hand, his flesh hand shakily reach upwards from his sitting place on the park bench towards the offering above.

“Took you long enough, punk.”

Brooklyn twang on the words, a blinding light in Steve’s smile and an embrace that bound every broken thread of him together.

He was ready to go home.


End file.
